The Darkest Materials: The Edge of Night
by Traskold
Summary: Second in The Darkest Materials Collection of one-shots, drabbles and short stories. Casting Melkor out into the Void was the very worst thing that the Valar could have done. For now he had allies. And they are not friends to Eru or the Valar.


**The**** Edge of Night**

* * *

Fools. They were all fools.

Every single one of them.

When I was newly formed, out of the Dust of the Void, I always wanted to know more of the Darkness, of the never ending scream that lies between the High World and the Low. Eru, I now see him for what he was - a trickster and a liar, decided soon after the Angels and the Daemons were born that he preferred us, the Pure White, to the Savage Red. He lied to us all, claiming that he had created us, just like he would create a World of Life, and populate it. He made us feel special: me, my kin Manwë and Nienna, my friends Ulmo and Aulë and my lover, the Dove, but we were duped by his honeyed words. We were no more than the other side of the coin, the opposites of Daemonkind. I knew there was something out there in the Void, and I had to find out what. I had to.

They were stupid, blind idiots. It was Tulkas, who hated me as I had stolen the Dove from him, who first accused me of searching for the Flame of Life. He said I wanted to rebel against Eru and create Life of my own. Which suited my purposes perfectly - if they wanted to believe that, then they could. It drew less and less attention away from my true purpose. I was searching the edges of the Void, but not for the Flame (which I know is the Dust). I was searching for the Daemonkind, to make contact with them. Abandoned by Eru, they moved freely between their hellish world and the Void with no rules and no order to govern them.

I knew that I had to get into the Void, but Eru forbade any of us to try it. Instead, he compelled us to begin work on the World of Life that he had shown us. I, being wiser and cleverer than any other Ainu, suspected his motive in creating this World - or appearing to create it at the case turned out to be. He wanted more subjects and more land to rule over. Don't we all? My plans came to fruition, when we, the Choirs of the Angelic Host, sung the Dust into a frenzy. We did not create the World. Eru did not create the world. It was the Dust, pleased by our singing, who began to create exotic Matter once more. Manwë, my sop of a brother who had now become broken and a slave to Eru, led the party who wished to descend into the World and order it rightly for when the time came for intelligent Life to appear. I tagged along with them; with Manwë and Mandos; and Varda and Vana; and Ulmo, Uinen, Aulë, Aiwendil, Olórin, Oromë and all the many others.

They thought (foolishly) that I had come to destroy what they built, to defile the land and desecrate the World. And I did... For several ages. They finally fell into my trap, just afore the Elder Children awoke. But alas, they did not cast me out into the Dark as I knew they could! They chained me and locked me up. I escaped, with the help of a Void-creature named Ungweliantë who turned on me and trapped me even more embarrassingly than the past three ages. For the next five hundred years, my servants laboured under the new Sun of the Vaulted Dome, but the Valar refuse to act. I submerged all the world, save Valinor, in Darkness but they sat and worried little about me. I was beginning to believe that my plan would never work, until finally, with a little help from me, a Mortal's ship made it through the maze of enchantments surrounding Valinor. They came upon Middle-Earth like a hammer upon hot iron, hard swift and effective. I couldn't give myself up immediately, the war had to last some decades at least. But in the end as my last servant fled the North, I let them chain me and take me back to Valinor to be tried.

Finally, they thrust me through the Doors of Night and out into the Void. I achieved what I was forbidden by Eru through the Valar's ignorance and incompetence, and met face to face, Angelkind to Daemonkind with my Counter-Self. As Angels and Daemons are opposites, they each must have a Counter-Self, from Myself, Prince among the Ainur, right down to the lowliest Maia or Daemon Child. And together, the Good turned Evil and the Evil turned even more Evil, we can wreck such damage over Aman and the Universe that the walls of Creation will be torn down forever.

For I will not fight the Dagor Dagorath alone.

And on that day, both Angel and Daemon will turn against Eru, and fight his armies. And we will win.


End file.
